Financial Inclusion and Indebtedness-A Study of Rural Punjab

Financial inclusion is a process of ensuring access to financial services and timely and adequate credit at an affordable cost. For financial growth, it is a move from opening an account in the bank to regular savings and finally to a relationship which enables the borrower to access loans on regular basis. The present study was conducted in rural Punjab with the objectives to examine the extent of financial inclusion in terms of number bank accounts and to analyze the availability of institutional and non-institutional credit, its adequacy, timely access to credit and rate of interest. Ten villages were selected for the purpose of study and total enumeration method was used for collection of primary data. The study highlighted that despite the majority of the respondents having bank account, the access to credit was very low which needs the attention of the policy makers.